GDT: Sabres @ Pittsburgh 7 PM TV: TNT, truTV, Max Radio:WGR550

[MOGlLNY]

Take the point and move on. Yeah you blew a lead but you also came back to put yourself in a position to get the OT point. Go beat Chicago and Columbus and you’re .500 + 1. I’ll take that all day last week.

I am very very VERY concerned about Dylan Cozens. If Levi has a night tonight we may have a goalie controversy on our hands.

 

[jd1970]

UPL has been fighting it all season. He'll come around.

As the backup

 

[Fjordy]

Dahlin is not how most view him as. He simply lacks the intelligence to be one of the best in the NHL, and he always is making dumb plays.

It's as if he is a more talented version of Risto

It's funny, not long ago he had enough intelligence to be one of the best D in the league. Stop shitting on Dahlin, there's something else going on here.

 

[MOGlLNY]

Dahlin also is clearly struggling mentally, physically (injury nagging? captaincy struggles?) I think he will pull it together

 

[joshjull]

Take the point and move on. Yeah you blew a lead but you also came back to put yourself in a position to get the OT point. Go beat Chicago and Columbus and you’re .500 + 1. I’ll take that all day last week.

I am very very VERY concerned about Dylan Cozens. If Levi has a night tonight we may have a goalie controversy on our hands.

Why would that be? Ruff said something along the lines of there would be a rotation unless someone grabbed the #1 spot.

 

[Deep Blue Metallic]

As the backup

6K was garbage early last season too. He only got the net when Levi faltered. We all feared the worst, and he was a top-5 goalie in the second half of the season.

 

[MOGlLNY]

Why would that be? Ruff said something along the lines of there would be a rotation unless someone grabbed the #1 spot.

Because that would be 3 really good games for Levi and 3 average to bad games for 6K.

I think we should continue to rotate beyond that but their will definitely be noise to make Levi the starter if that happens.

 

[jd1970]

Cozens is starting to remind me of a forward version of Risto: The raw talent is clearly there but constantly makes awful decisions that make him a liability and I don't know if he's ever going to figure it out.

I think it has more to do with him getting the living hell beat out of him in that game last season. Hasn't been the same since.

 

[MOGlLNY]

I think it has more to do with him getting the living hell beat out of him in that game last season. Hasn't been the same since.

He was bad before that and got into that fight because he was pissed off about his own play.

Don’t like this narrative as it seems like an excuse, he’s just been bad.

 

[HOOats]

Frustrating that we didn't bury any of the chances to go up 4-1. Firmly believe we would have buried them there, they didn't have much going for them.

Power and Dahlin each sending soft pucks around the boards to the Pens pointman on goals against is unfortunately representative. Waiting for them to get a little smarter and a little harder.

That (and the PP finding itself) would go a long way towards helping out the strong 5v5 play that has me optimistic still.

He was bad before that and got into that fight because he was pissed off about his own play.

Don’t like this narrative as it seems like an excuse, he’s just been bad.

Thanks for setting the record straight on this. I lost the energy to months ago.

His slow start last year, PRE-FIGHT, helped cripple our first ten games.

 

[Bobby Bottle Service]

He was bad before that and got into that fight because he was pissed off about his own play.

Don’t like this narrative as it seems like an excuse, he’s just been bad.

He hasn't been the same since he inked the big contract.

And getting knocked tf out certainly didn't help.

 

[CowbellConray]

UPL had a bad game. He made a nice save on Bunting which was the result of him falling early but Bunting shooting right into his glove.

Sabres lost this one for sure. Their PP is dreadful, it lacks intensity. Get the puck to the point and throw a wrist shot on net with Tuch/Greenway/Cozens charging in. This pass around and lazy entries are killing us. Even strength the team actually did quite well, we had several chances. The Pens rookie goalie played a heck of a game.

That Pens goal was for sure offsides, however it's not a surprise it was kept. It was close, and it was called a goal on the ice. VAR needs to be a thing - get it away from the eye test and bring in technology to show exactly how it's measured.

 

[GellMann]

Cozens has the worst hands on the team, including the 4th liners and scratches. It was something I worried about the day we drafted him and i watched a highlight package. It's never gotten better and never will. We need a center

 

[MOGlLNY]

“Cozens is so snakebitten” has been a constant thing for the last 3 years. I think this is just him

 

[Beerz]

Frustrating that we didn't bury any of the chances to go up 4-1. Firmly believe we would have buried them there, they didn't have much going for them.

Power and Dahlin each sending soft pucks around the boards to the Pens pointman on goals against is unfortunately representative. Waiting for them to get a little smarter and a little harder.

That (and the PP finding itself) would go a long way towards helping out the strong 5v5 play that has me optimistic still.

Thanks for setting the record straight on this. I lost the energy to months ago.

His slow start last year, PRE-FIGHT, helped cripple our first ten games.

While true he was bad at start of last season... he was coming out of it and playing well before that fight.. and then just torpedoed after the fight.

 

[brian_griffin]

As noted previously, I only saw the 3rd and OT via DVR, so missed this real-time, and wasn't in the GDT either. Don't they have opposite-side cameras at the blue line? I thought Key Bank does - maybe not PPG arena? I thought NHL required it - maybe NHL simply requires a single camera on the line (as opposed to offset from the line). Anyway, I agree with you and others that regardless of whether it was offsides or not (not fully clear from the replay angle here) that if the call was a goal and there is no opposite side angle to see the puck on the blade, the call on the ice can't be reversed.

There is a difference I think. Cozens gets so in his own head. It ends up getting him playing hesitant and kills his confidence. Risto was confidently terrible.

I laughed. And I'll use it at work if/when the person and circumstances present themselves for it to be an apt description of incompetence.

 

[Steddy33]

I would have fired him the year before when he threw the season. Granato never got a fair chance as a coach.

Granato earned his firing. Not addressing the PP and his lack of line matching at the end of games was enough for me alone.

 

[HaNotsri]

Granato earned his firing. Not addressing the PP and his lack of line matching at the end of games was enough for me alone.

He overperformed every single season but the last one. I'm ok with firing him but Adams should have been gone long before then for sitting on his ass.

 

[BFLO]

While true he was bad at start of last season... he was coming out of it and playing well before that fight.. and then just torpedoed after the fight.

He was playing average up to the fight, but not great. I think a lot of posters here have talked up the fight to be far more impactful on his season than it was. It looks like it only cost him about 5 points on the season.

Cozens point totals by month last season.
October: 7
November: 4 (fight was Nov 3) (he was on 52 points pace per 82 games played at the time of the fight)
Dec: 9
Jan: 9
Feb: 7
March: 6
April: 6

I don't see how a fight from Nov explains him getting worse in Feb/March when he had already bounced back to about average (50 point pace) in December. He finished the season with 47 points in 79 games. He was only below average for about a month due to the fight.

Look at his 2022-23 numbers:
October: 6
November: 12
Dec: 16
Jan: 9
Feb: 9
March: 10
April: 6

If we exclude the 25 games in Nov and Dec where he put up 28 points, he played at 58 point pace the rest of that season. So a little higher than 2023-24, but not a huge amount.

The outlier is his highly productive Nov/Dec of 2022, not the other 11 months excluding the fight month.

 

[sabremike]

Cozens has the worst hands on the team, including the 4th liners and scratches. It was something I worried about the day we drafted him and i watched a highlight package. It's never gotten better and never will. We need a center

If they find a team willing to give up good value for him they should move him. Doesn't just have awful hands he's also one of the least smart players on the roster as well (constantly makes catastrophically dumb and awful plays).

 

[Gabrielor]

It's funny, not long ago he had enough intelligence to be one of the best D in the league. Stop shitting on Dahlin, there's something else going on here.
View attachment 917727

Dahlin might be the last problem on this team.

 

[Gras]

Of course it was off sides, but conclusive evidence of this is needed, which is based on a visual inspection of the puck. Since you can't see the puck from this angle, I don't think the linesmen had the evidence they needed to establish off sides. This may be a flaw in the review process, or a result of review guidance provided by the league.

I'd be curious what the off sides review rule says or what the guidelines are around how the linesmen establish support for overturning the missed call.

You would think they would be able to setup a camera on both sides of the blue line and one directly overhead and you would be able to sync and view all the feeds at the same time.

 

[Beerz]

He was playing average up to the fight, but not great. I think a lot of posters here have talked up the fight to be far more impactful on his season than it was. It looks like it only cost him about 5 points on the season.

Cozens point totals by month last season.
October: 7
November: 4 (fight was Nov 3) (he was on 52 points pace per 82 games played at the time of the fight)
Dec: 9
Jan: 9
Feb: 7
March: 6
April: 6

I don't see how a fight from Nov explains him getting worse in Feb/March when he had already bounced back to about average (50 point pace) in December. He finished the season with 47 points in 79 games. He was only below average for about a month due to the fight.

Look at his 2022-23 numbers:
October: 6
November: 12
Dec: 16
Jan: 9
Feb: 9
March: 10
April: 6

If we exclude the 25 games in Nov and Dec where he put up 28 points, he played at 58 point pace the rest of that season. So a little higher than 2023-24, but not a huge amount.

The outlier is his highly productive Nov/Dec of 2022, not the other 11 months excluding the fight month.

I don't think the fight had that long of a lasting effect. Unless it was psychological.

 

[Chainshot]

I don't think the fight had that long of a lasting effect. Unless it was psychological.

Felt the fishbowl had impact on his ability to handle the puck while he was recovering from getting his nose blown up. There seemed to be a lot more mishandles in that time but how much that impacted his overall totals would be interesting to quantify. He did seem to struggle most of the year.

 

[BFLO]

I don't think the fight had that long of a lasting effect. Unless it was psychological.

Yeah. That's what my posts says. 3-4 weeks after the hit he was back to playing the same as he was before the hit.